
Author 



Title 



Imprint 



16—47372-3 






K 


N 





W 


I 


N 


G 




R 


E 


A 


L 


M 


E 


N 






DAVID STARR 


JORDAN 








DAVID STARR JORDAN 

From a portrait by Mrs. Emma Ctirtis Richardson 






~&& 

i 

I 
| 

i 

i 

m 
m 

i 

I 

IS 

m 

II 

i 
i 

P 

m 
m 

m 

I 
II 



I 



KNOWING 
REAL MEN 

DAVID STARR JORDAN 




SAN FRANCISCO 

WHITAKER & RAY-WIGGIN CO. 
19 12 



I 

■ 

1 

m 



m 

I 

i 

n 
m 

m 

m 
m 
i 

1 



1 
i 

03= 

i 

m 
m 

w 



mm 






Copyright 

by 

David Starr Jordan 

19 10 



TRANSFUSED FrTOM 

•OPYWGrtT OFFIGfc 

MAY t9l| 



KNOWING REAL MEN* 

IN a recent address, Professor William James 
has told us that the best result of a college edu- 
cation should be that you should "know a good 
man when you see him." In other words, it 
should teach something of the relative value of aims 
in life; to know good work from bad, and to ensure 
for ourselves, in some one direction at least, a grasp 
on a worthy ideal. 

Our next question is this : Has your college educa- 
tion given this power to you ? A recent writer in the 
American Magazine maintains that his college course 
never gave it to him. He did not know good when he 
saw it. Many others would admit the same thing if 
the question ever occurred to them. The writer just 
mentioned claims that from his college course he 
gained no perspective. Near things bank larger than 
distant ones; accidents, of the day outrank the great 
things of the past and the future. This he finds true 
from every point of view. For example, as a college 
graduate, Mark Hanna seemed to him a bigger man 
than Charlemagne. Later in life when the perspective 
became clearer he saw the difference and wished that 
he had made Charlemagne's acquaintance earlier. In 
his geography he says the map of Indiana and that of 
Montana covered each a page, and the one was as large 

•Graduating Address to the Class of 1908, Stanford Universitj. 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



as the other. New Jersey was as big as California and 
Maine as large as Australia. Later, when he crossed 
the Rocky Mountains, he found that the map did not 
do Montana justice. Its territory would make six 
states the size of Indiana. This didn't matter much in 
this particular case, but the same distortion of values 
appeared in everything he thought he knew. From 
this he concluded that his own college education was 
largely a failure. It did not meet Professor James' 
definition. He did not learn to know a good man 
when he saw him. He did not know things as they 
really are in their relations, one thing to another. 

When a wise man says a true thing, we can all say 
it after him. We wonder why we had not said it 
before ourselves. We see at once how hard it is to 
know a good man anyhow. If you as students take 
this matter to heart you will see the faults in your 
own education ; you cannot tell the best that lies about 
you. The graduates of other colleges have the same 
defect of vision, and our whole system of higher edu- 
cation is perverted in the same way. 

There was once a banker in the days of wildcat cur- 
rency who had a wonderful skill in detecting counter- 
feits. He acquired this skill not by studying counter- 
feits; he studied good money. Whatever was not 
good money to him was not money at all to him. It 
was mere waste paper, not worth even the name of 
counterfeit. So to detect error one must study truth ; 
the rest is waste and rubbish. To know a good man 
when you see him, you must study good men. All 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



short of this is bad. To know good work you must 
study good work. The rest is frivolity and common- 
place. 
m This is a time to search our hearts, to size up 
| our own promise of the future. Do you know a good 
man when you see him? Do you, after four years at 
Stanford, know what is really worth while? For ex- 
ample, some of you know, I presume, the best record 
for a quarter mile dash, for a race over hurdles, the 
record distance of a broad jump or a hammer throw. 
Some of you know a winning hand at poker, some 
how to tune up a rollicking song, some the manipula- 
tion of a skirt dance, some the framing of a sonnet, 
some the ideals of a Greek philosopher, some the art 
of inventing dynamos, some the theory of ions and 
electrons, some the measurement of electric charges, 
some the secret of knowing equities, some the investi- 
gation of the energies of life. Some are prepared for 
the next ball, some for entrance into a profession; 
some to break into politics, some, perhaps, to adorn 
the front of a tobacco store. Can you tell which of 
these is worth while? 

There is an abundance of good work done at Stan- 
ford all the time. How many of us know the best 
thing, the best ten things, or any of the best ten things 
done by any Stanford man in the last ten years ? How 
many of you know the best things done here at Stan- 
ford in the year just past? Can you tell which of 
your number is best worth while; which one will be 
wise, sound, clean and efficient, after the struggles 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



and roundups of twenty or thirty years? Which one 
will then be leader of your class, not by the ballot, 
which is an emotional test, when it is not a selfish one, 
but by virtue of his crystallized character, of his own 
innate strength, of his being through and through a 
good man and a man who makes good? Sooner or 
later you should know a good man when you see him, 
do you know this same man now? If you do, it is 
well and good ; this homily is wasted. If you do not, 
whose fault is it? Is it yours or ours? Or shall we 
modestly and justly divide the blame between our stu- 
dents and our teachers? Surely all share in the re- 
sponsibility, as we all suffer in the failure in result. 

There are many factors which tend to destroy the 
perspective in college life. These two bulk largest: 
The intrusion of the outside world — and the exaltation 
of side issues, the minor incidents, the byplay of boy- 
hood, to the injury of the real business of the college. 

The outside world intrudes through its vulgar stand- 
ards of morality, its eagerness for money getting, its 
instinct for sensationalism, its chase for vulgar pleas- 
ures and unearned and unreal joys. We cannot claim 
in fact that the standard of the average college man 
is continuously higher than that of other men ; that he 
bears a price so high that the politician and the bribe- 
giver cannot reach him. We cannot claim that the 
average college man bears a loftier standard of ideals 
than other men of equal native ability. Here and 
there is one in whom our best ambitions are made real. 
Such a one stands out above other college men and in 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



him is our hope and our justification. But he must 
have been a rare man to begin with, and only the rare 
man can grow to be a better man after he leaves the 
college. A man can go through college and receive 
nothing of University ideals. There are many men 
who perform our college tasks, who meet our require- 
ments, who pass our examinations, who receive our 
degrees, and yet who never know at all what it is all 
about. The finest poetry, the noblest philosophy, the 
loftiest enthusiasm, finds them dumb and cold. Their 
heart is in the market place, or worse, in the vaudeville 
theatre, not in the Academe. The outside world, 
through its worst phase, the call for pleasure, holds 
them in its grasp. Perhaps we cannot help this. The 
very usefulness of the college, its popularity, its re- 
spectability, all growing by leaps and bounds, are 
sources of danger. They appeal to the unfit as well 
as to the fit ; they all extend invitations to the degener- 
ate as well as to the genius. And too often the college 
itself is deceived in this matter. It mistakes wealth 
and popularity and populousness for success. Why 
should we care for numbers, we University men? 
Why should we rejoice in popularity? Why should 
we welcome advertising? Surely none of these helps 
the college, none of them strengthens the hold of the 
college on the lives of men. 

In another way, less dangerous but still often disas- 
trous, the outside world infringes. This is through 
the spirit of money getting. What will the college do 
for me? It must raise my salary or I will have noth- 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



ing of it. Training for live work does increase a 
man's salary. Thus it often becomes a means to this 
alone. Standing all alone, this is a petty end. To be 
sure, some source of income is the scholar's necessity. 
Every man worth while should earn his own living 
and enough more to pay his taxes and to do his part 
in the life of the community. The world owes no man 
a living so far as I know, and those who think it does 
and depend on collecting it, as a rule, have a deservedly 
hard time. But for the rest, money does not mean 
success. Stanford has stood from the first for prepara- 
tion for success in life, but of this success a financial 
surplus is only an incident — a minor factor: — the small- 
est part of the whole. 

Again, the world, as we all see it, with its traditional 
associates, the flesh and the devil, makes its encroach- 
ments on the academic life in other guises, some more 
dangerous than the hope for financial gain. College 
spirit, like the mantle of charity, covers its multitude 
of sins. Much that passes as college spirit is the poor- 
est kind of vulgarity, the inspiration of the street, the 
bleachers, the saloon. Test your college spirit by this 
definition given by a Stanford alumnus, three years 
ago, and you may know whether it is genuine or not: 

"In loyalty to Stanford— to the whole university— 
by word and deed, always, by silence, even, when 
speech were disloyal; in honoring Stanford people to 
the measure of their loyalty and no more; in building 
with the builders through faith in the Stanford plan ; 
in making every best effort spell Stanford before an- 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



other name; in planting no seed in Stanford ground 
without hope of flower somewhere; and for the sake 
of these things reverencing the sentiment that gave 
the Stanford opportunity — therein lies the beginning, 
but not the end, of the Stanford Spirit." 

If your college spirit is not the real thing, if it is 
counterfeit, it is no spirit at all. It is nothing at all 
but a bit of noisy shamming. There is no counterfeit 
money; what is not good money is not money at all. 
So with college spirit, what is not genuine is nothing. 
So with one's efforts in life; what is not honest, what 
is not real, has no existence. 

The real Stanford — the Stanford you should know- 
is known by its ideals and its results. It is not the 
Stanford of the man on the street, of the bartender 
in a Cardinal saloon, nor even of the rooter on the 
bleachers at the great football game. The fate of 
Stanford depends on the moral victory of the clean 
mind and the stout heart. 

For part of your shortcomings, if you have any, 
the college teachers are to blame. We have been too 
worldly, too little serious. We have let in too much 
of the outside world and introduced you too often to 
its agents. We have let Mark Hanna displace Char- 
lemagne. We have made a science a railroad map 
in which our own line shows straight and large among 
feeble and meandering rivals. 

The other great source of loss of perspective is in 
the exaltation of what we Call student activities. By 
this we mean not the activities of the student, nor even 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



the student's natural and normal by-play, but profes- 
sionalism, with students as performers. Twenty years 
ago all of us welcomed football, track meets, and all 
other forms of intercollegiate athletics because it 
seemed to lay stress on physical betterments. We 
believe in sound minds and sound bodies, and the 
encouragement of all out-of-door sports seemed to 
tend in that direction. But the outcome has been very 
different from the anticipation. In each college two 
or three dozen of racers and gladiators trained out of 
all proportion, professionals in every sense, save that 
they are paid in gratitude and notoriety instead of 
money, practically monopolize our athletics. The rest 
of us as scrubs and weaklings worship from afar with 
noisy resonance. Our heroes of the day in the fierce 
light of publicity are exposed to praise or blame out 
of all proportion to their faults, their merits, or their 
achievements. Their duty is to win games, ours to 
show loyalty, and that by talk and yelling. And the 
tumult and the shouting has been organized into a 
concerted system as foolish as it is futile. I have never 
heard of a game ever won by the rooters, and it would 
not be honest sport if such were the case. 

I believe in athletics, in sturdy, virile athletics, even 
in intercollegiate athletics, as means to an end — the 
great end of making one's brain and body work in 
unison. There is no training much more essential 
than training in physical manliness, but no part of our 
present system contributes much to this end, while 
manifold evils appear on every hand, and most notably 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



in the distortion of ideals in college life. As the red- 
coat bully in his boots kept Thackeray from seeing the 
Queen of England, so does the figure of the stalwart 
athlete keep us from recognizing the real college men. 
We don't know a good man when we see him because 
we don't see him. Figures of exaggerated mediocrity 
fill the center of the stage. 

It is no answer to this to say that the same condi- 
tions exist in all our colleges, that your higher educa- 
tion is all in the same boat, and these evils are less in 
the California Universities than in any other of our 
great colleges. If this is true, but the more is the 
pity, the greater the need of a new revival of learning, 
a new revival of religion in the true meaning of the 
word, in the very heart of wisdom's chosen centers. 

The great Eastern colleges are feeling this. They 
are trying their best to exalt the real college men. 
They print names of honor students in larger and 
larger letters. It is the dig and the grind, after all, 
the man who does his work when the work is due, who 
stands for the college of the future. The athlete 
counts only as brains and courage are counted. For- 
tunately brains and courage often go with athletic 
skill and strength — but not always. The alumnus who 
does things worth while, who lives a gentle and a 
sturdy life, is the man who gives joy to his alma mater. 
Only the force of tradition, the inertia of institutions 
can excuse a college for granting its degrees to any 
inferior kind. A man is either a man or else he is 
not much of anything. There is nothing worth notice 



KNOWING REAL MEN 



in a counterfeit. No institution ean live, none deserves 
to live, unless from time to time it can be born again ; 
Stanford is ready today for a new birth and a new 
dedication. It is for you to help give it. It is for all 
of us to agonize toward it and when our young« Uni- 
versity, already too old, is reborn, you will know and 
I shall know, and every true Stanford man and woman 
will know a good man when he sees him, 



MM. 18 W12 



